Patriots Lose To The Lowly Dolphins and Relinquish Number 1 Seed

The Patriots came into Sunday's game against the Miami Dolphins in a position to grab the first seed in the AFC and thus have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, at least up until Super Bowl 50. They then proceeded to play terribly at Sun Life Stadium, losing 20-10. The gmae was frustrating for Pats fans, as it seemed like there wasn't a great game plan in place to beat the Dolpins. I knew that they prioritized health heading into the postseason, but I still was surprised to see just how vanilla the gameplan really was. Could this be part of Belichick's plan in order to not show the rest of the league anything before the truly meaningful games start? Maybe. It still would have been nice to get that first seed and lock in home-field throughout.

Instead, the Denver Broncos beat the visiting San Diego Chargers 27-20 to make sure that if Denver wins their Divisional Round game, that all roads will go through Mile High Stadium. As a Pats fan, that's a hard pill to swallow. Two years ago, the Patriots dreams were dashed in Denver with a loss to the Peyton Manning - led Broncos, while just a few weeks ago Brock Osweiler was able to beat them in Mile High as well. This year hopefully, if the Pats can get healthy, it may be a different story.